Tim said that Wells Tower is his favorite author ever ever now, which is a pretty big deal, and he’s been pushing this book pretty hard basically since it came out, so I read it on a plane a few days ago. And it was good, I liked it, but Wells Tower hasn’t become my new favorite author evar or anything. A friend wrote it off as something like “men having men’s feelings,” which I think is a pretty unfair reduction, but which might be part of why it didn’t hit me as hard as it’s hit some people. I mean, dude can write, and he does a really good job of walking the line between gross/ridiculous and heavy- kind of like Etgar Keret a little bit, although I guess not that much, because these stories are longer and go deeper than Keret’s. Is what she said- although it seems to me like there’s less underpants kinds of talk as the book goes on. And that was the stuff that i liked the best: when it was clear that these guys have their problems and they’ve fucked up but it’s not all bleak, or ONLY bleak.
Do you want to hear the best part? Don’t read any more if you don’t want to read the best line in the book. Seriously, ready? This one guy is talking about filling out an online dating application, and the question is “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” He answers “A bumblebee trying to fuck a glass marble.”
(this review is from my old goodreads account.)
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